


Peter and Jared

by MorganLeBae



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Franklin & Bash, Hänsel und Gretel | Hansel and Gretel (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Gen, M/M, tw: abandonment, tw: cannibalism, tw: death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-22
Updated: 2014-08-22
Packaged: 2018-02-14 07:28:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2183118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorganLeBae/pseuds/MorganLeBae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hansel and Gretel AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peter and Jared

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of a gift for a friend, I haven't watched the show in so long so apologies in anyone's OOC - for the context, anyway. Also I realised I missed my chance to do Snow White and Rose Red and include a bear. Oh well. Also no sex, sorry. I believe in their love though.

"Are you sure this is the way?" Peter asked.

"I'm pretty sure, man."

"How do you even – the breadcrumbs are _gone_."

"Yeah, 'cause they were eaten by birds. And I'm pretty sure I saw one of the birds fly off _this_ way.”

Peter rolled his eyes.

“Are we lost?”

“Yes.”

Well, that was just perfect. For some reason they continued to tramp through the foliage and over various roots anyway.

“Why are we still going this way then?”

“Do you have a better way to go?”

“Aren’t you supposed to stay where you are when you’re lost and wait for someone to come look for you?”

“Do you think anyone’s going to come looking for us?”

They went silent for awhile as they continued to walk.

“Why do you think your dad keeps doing this to us?”

“I don’t know, man. I stopped asking those questions a long time ago.”

They walked for a little while in a way that Peter hoped wasn’t ‘aimlessly’.

“Should have brought more rocks,” Jared said.

Peter winced. Now he felt bad.

“It wasn’t your fault, man,” he said, keeping his eyes trained on Jared’s back. “You didn’t know.”

“I _did_ know. If he pulled this once, it was obvious he was going to pull it again. And how hard is it to collect rocks? They’re everywhere!”

Peter went quiet. He wanted to say ‘it’s not your fault’ again. But Jared never believed that when it came to stuff like this.

He peered up through the trees. It was dark anyway in the forest, but from the looks of it it was starting to get darker.

He hesitated over mentioning it to Jared. He didn’t know what would sound like criticism again.

“Should we find somewhere to sleep when it gets dark?” he finally went with, trying to sound neutral.

Jared stopped and looked up at the sky. Then he looked around at the trees, his hands on his hips.

“Yeah, probably,” he finally said, defeatedly.

Peter put his hands on Jared’s shoulders.

“Hey,” he said, waiting for Jared to look him in the eye. “We’re going to be okay.”

Jared smiled ruefully up at him.

“Are we?” he asked.

“Yeah. We’ve survived worse than this before. We’ll get some sleep tonight, and then tomorrow we’ll just keep walking until we get out of the woods. And then…we’ll go somewhere far, far away from your dad. I’m starting to get the feeling he doesn’t want us around anymore.”

Jared’s smile widened, and he looked down at the ground. When he looked back up he glanced over Peter’s shoulder – and suddenly frowned.

“What’s that?”

Peter turned to look, and eventually spotted what Jared had seen, squinting. There was a light, small and flickering, coming from between the trees. It stood out more as the woods got darker.

“Maybe it’s someone with a lamp,” he said excitedly. “Or maybe a house.”

“Who’d have a house out in the middle of the woods? Except maybe someone’s creepy old grandma. I know it definitely isn’t mine, she ran off to the coast a long time ago.”

“Well, we should check it out. It’s better than nothing.”

He turned and started walking quickly in the direction of the light.

“Unless it’s someone who decides they want to kill us,” Jared muttered, following after him. “Or a willow-the-wisp, leading us to our deaths. Which would be better than starving I guess, yeah.”

They picked their way quickly through the trees and finally came out into a clearing where stood…a diner. A good, old-fashioned American diner, big plate glass windows advertising breakfast, lunch and dinner. The light had come from the neon sign just flickering into life.

Peter and Jared both stared.

“What the hell’s a diner doing out here in the middle of the woods?” Jared wondered.

“Maybe…they get a lot of business from passing lumberjacks?” Peter suggested, uncertainly. He looked around. There was no-one around that he could see. There was _nothing_ else around that he could see. “It doesn’t matter, I guess. It’s the only building around here for miles. Maybe they’ve got a phone we can use.”

“To call who?”

“Well, I – they might let us stay the night. You know, away from the wolves and bears and everything. At the very least they’ll have some food.”

“Do you have any money to pay them with?”

“We’ll wash dishes or whatever, come on man, what else are we going to do?”

Peter started walking up to the diner door.

“This is just a little bit _weird_ is all!” Jared called after him.

The door to the diner suddenly cracked open, and out stepped a man. He was perfectly ordinary-looking, but he looked a little – neat. In a way Jared didn’t like. He didn’t look like diner staff. He wasn’t even wearing an apron – he was wearing a three-piece suit.

“Hello,” the man said mildly. He didn’t look at all surprised to see them.

Peter stopped short at the bottom of the diner steps.

“Uh…hi,” he said.

The man didn’t reply to him. He just looked the two of them up and down. Jared didn’t appreciate the cold blue eyes sizing him up one bit.

“Are you here to eat?” the man asked.

Peter’s rumbling stomach answered that question for him.

“Uh – yeah. If we can. Is this your place?”

The man smiled as if that were the most obvious question in the world, and they were both idiots.

“Yes, this is my place.”

He looked Peter over again, and then Jared.

“Well, come in,” he said, opening the door a little wider. “The kitchen’s always open.”

Peter hesitated for a moment, and looked back at Jared. Jared shrugged. They both walked up and entered the diner.

* * *

Three days later, Jared was sweeping floors.

“I’m sorry, man.”

He looked up at Peter in his cage.

“There’s nothing to apologise for,” he replied. “You’re the one in the cage.”

Peter looked at the bars morosely.

“Yeah,” he said.

Jared continued to sweep. The man – Damien – had promised something even worse than all of this if he didn’t do all the chores he was set properly, and he couldn’t imagine what would _be_ worse, but he figured he didn’t want to find out if all it would take was a little sweeping.

“ _You_ said it was pretty weird a diner being out here. I should have listened to you.”

Jared nodded to himself, but kept sweeping.

“Well, at least he’s feeding us.”

“Peter, you know he’s feeding you up to eat you, right?”

“Yeah, but…at least he’s feeding us.”

Jared rolled his eyes.

“Feeding _you_ anyway,” he muttered to himself. “Apparently the little scrawny one doesn’t need full meals. You’d think it would be the other way around, but no…”

“Hey,” Peter said. Jared looked up at him again. He looked serious this time. “You’re gonna run away, aren’t you? After I’m…”

Jared’s hands tightened around the sweeping brush.

“I’m – I’m actually not gonna let that happen,” he said, with a small hard laugh. “I told you: I’m not leaving you man. No matter what happens.”

“What are you going to do?”

Jared looked around the kitchen. Everything you might expect in a kitchen that could be used as a weapon was mysteriously missing, had been ever since Jared had arrived. No knives, cleavers, nothing. The only dangerous thing was the huge oven taking up almost half of the far wall, and frankly, Jared preferred not to think about that.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “But I’ll think of something. Even if I have to beat him to death with the sweeping brush. Or shove it through his heart.”

“That’s vampires. And can we…not talk about that…”

“Well, you just don’t look then. I’ll do it. You just…concentrate on not getting eaten.”

“Roger.”

They heard the diner door opening in the other room. Jared got his head down and quickly got back to sweeping.

“On a scale of one to ten, how much better is this than living with your father?” Peter whispered.

“Ten,” Jared whispered back.

Damien entered the kitchen. He looked around, and scuffed his shoe against the linoleum.

“Not bad,” he said, without looking up at Jared. “The surfaces could do with wiping though.”

He gave Jared a thin smile, and then looked up at Peter.

“Anyway,” he said. “ _I_ think it’s about time to get the meal on.”

Jared stood up straight, staring at him.

“What, _now_?” he asked, leaning against the sweeping brush.

“Three days is long enough to wait, don’t you think?”

Jared looked up at Peter, all wide-eyed in the cage.

“But look at him,” he protested. “He’s still all…skin and bones.”

Peter pulled himself up as tall and skinny as possible, sucking in his chest.

“He looks good to me,” Damien said. The asshole gave Jared an amused look. “Now, would you mind getting the oven ready?”

Jared stared at Damien, who smirked back. Apparently he was serious.

Jared looked over at the huge oven.

“I don’t know how to work that thing,” he said. He tried to look as unaffected as possible.

Damien glared at him.

“You don’t know how to work an oven?” he asked, disbelievingly.

“I don’t know how to work _that_ oven. Come on, it’s frickin’ huge. I’ve never even seen an oven that big. Peter –”

He turned.

“Have you ever seen an oven that big?”

“Nope.” Peter shook his head. “Never.”

“There you go,” Jared said, turning back. “I don’t know how to work it. I wouldn’t even know how to open the door.”

Damien looked like he was getting mad. A muscle was jumping in one cheek.

“Guess. You’d probably get it right.”

“Come on, give me _some_ leeway. You’re threatening to, what, kill me, if I don’t do your chores right? The least you can do is show me what to do first. Or how am I supposed to know?”

Damien just stared at him for a moment, obviously still angry. But then he walked over to the oven. He lifted the obvious, heavy latch on the side of the oven door.

“ _This_ ,” he said, “is how you open the door.”

“Right, right, and then what? How do I get it ready?”

“You stoke the coals.”

The fire was raging unpleasantly right next to Damien.

“You… _what_? Stoke the coals? Look at the size of that fire! I’ll lose my arm stoking those.”

“It’s perfectly safe. You just get in underneath the ones at the front.”

“With what?”

“The poker.”

“What poker?”

“ _This_ ,” Damien said, lifting the poker off the poker stand, “poker.”

“That doesn’t look long enough.”

“I assure you it is.”

“And you just shove that in the coals? Right at the front? That’s not gonna stoke the fire, it goes too deep for that. You’re just going to stir the front ones up.”

“You don’t stir them up. You get in underneath them, deep, and you stoke them.”

Jared looked at him, and then at the coals for a moment.

“Show me,” he said.

Damien stared at him incredulously.

“ _What?_ ”

“Show me how to stoke the coals. ‘Cause I don’t believe just poking the ones at the front is going to do anything. So you show me how you do it, and then I’ll know and I can try it myself. Give me a chance at least.”

“You can just try it by yourself.”

“What, and risk doing it wrong? If I lose my arm I’m not going to be able to stoke anything for you, and if I don’t do it right and you come back in a few hours and the oven’s not ready, _you’re_ going to be pissed. So just show me how it’s done. Come on, man.”

Damien stared at him, and then rolled his eyes.

“Might as well just do it myself…” he muttered, bending over.

He leaned over the coals at the front, and pushed the poker underneath them

“Like this.”

Jared came closer.

“Just there?”

“Well, deeper than that.”

“How much deeper?”

“As deep as you can reach.”

“What, until my arm starts singeing?”

“You won’t have to go that deep.”

“Well, show me _how_ deep!”

“This is an Armani suit…”

Damien reached inside, and shovelled the poker deep into the coals, keeping an eye on his cuffs.

“ _This_ deep.”

Jared rammed the sweeping brush right into the middle of his back, and as he fell, swung the giant door shut behind him and bolted the latch.

He turned to Peter.

“That was the coolest thing I ever saw,” said Peter, breathlessly.

Jared nodded, also panting. He looked around at the oven. No screaming. Creepy. Then he suddenly winced.

“Ah _shit_ ,” he said.

“What?”

“The key’s probably in there with him.”

Peter looked over at the oven, and then he suddenly went a little green.

“Do you think he’s...?”

“Don’t think about it, Peter.”

* * *

An hour later, after an argument about whether Jared could just ‘pick up’ lock-picking and whether Peter believed in him, followed by them just beating the lock open with the heaviest frying pan they could find, Peter and Jared were on their way out of the diner with all the fruit and vegetables from the cupboards they could carry.

Only to have the door open again.

“ _Shit_ ,” Jared said, pulling up.

Through the door stepped a tall man with bright white hair. He was in a suit, just like Damien had been, but he looked a little less neat than him. He looked a little friendlier too, and a lot older, but frankly Jared’s trust in strangers had taken a bit of a beating over the past few days.

He and Peter drew back and together as the man spotted them, looking a little surprised.

“Oh God,” he said after a moment. “He’s not eating people again, is he?”

“Who’re you?” Jared asked, elbows drawn up, grapefruit half-raised in one hand.

“I’m Stanton,” the man said, eyeing them. “Stanton Infeld. I’m Damien’s uncle. Is he – in?”

“He’s dead,” Peter blurted out.

Jared closed his eyes.

“We killed him.”

Jared raised the back of his grapefruit-holding hand to his face.

“Oh,” the man said, sounding troubled. “I see.”

For a moment there was just silence.

“Well – if you’re going to eat people, you can’t expect them to not fight back I suppose!”

He sounded almost cheery.

“I guess I don’t need to talk to him anymore,” he said, seeming to lose himself in thought.

Jared eyed him over his knuckles.

“Who _are_ you?” he asked, dropping his hand. “Who was he?”

“Hmm?” Stanton said. “Oh, we’re witches. Well, I _am_ , he was. We live in the woods. It’s a lovely piece of real estate. Beautiful colours in the autumn. If you don’t mind my asking, who are you?”

“Uh…I’m Jared. This is Peter.” Jared tried to think if there were any old sayings about not telling witches your name, but then he figured it was too late now though.

“Are you witches?”

“No, just – lost in the woods.”

“Trying to get home?”

“Uh…no, I guess.”

“Hmm. Would you _like_ to be witches?”

“What?” Jared asked, with Peter following him just a split-second later. The man looked completely serious, and was even smiling.

“I could do with some new apprentices,” he said. “Especially if Damien’s not around anymore.”

“Uhh…” Jared looked at Peter. He looked confused but not uninterested. “Uh…would we have to eat people?”

“Not if you don’t want to. It’s a lifestyle choice.”

Jared looked back at Peter. Peter shrugged. It wasn’t like they had a lot of better options.

“Can we stay together?”

“What? Oh, of course. Some of my other apprentices live together...Carmen and Pindar, for example. I’ll introduce you.”

“How many apprentices do you have?”

“Lots. I _love_ apprentices.”

“Can we like, turn things into gold and stuff?” Peter put in, as they started moving forwards, towards the door Stanton was holding open for them.

“Well, that’s really alchemy, but I can put you in touch with some people if you’d like."

“Uh yeah, sure.”

“Hey, can we keep the diner?”

“As long as you’re happy to clean out the oven.”

“Oh _god…_ ”

“I’ll do it, I’ll do it…”

* * *

And they all lived happily ever after.


End file.
